PixlBit

Troubling times for me this week, so I kept it simple with Minecraft and Defense Grid 2. 

I'm now out of work, but I have some support and should be ok while I look for something better. 

Minecraft. Mark was in a world messin' around in survival mode, so I joined up and we did the usual quest for diamonds and battling in The Nether. It's quite fun but there's always a time during the day that the connection begins to fail and I'm kickout of the game over and over again. It's usually around the busy times between 4 and 8. So maybe there are some server issues. 

But that problem resulted in us playing Defense Grid 2, the tower defense game on XBO, co-op. Yes you can play this game online co-op in the multiplayer section. You can co-op the campaign but only same-screen.

So there are several modes for co-op play: one has each of you sharing resources, and another designates where each player can place their towers. This was a bunch of fun. Then we started chasing achievements and played solo, because there are a lot of achievements in campaign mode. One of the more difficult ones was getting a gold medal on all 20 story missions. I was on the last one I needed before I had to stop for the night. I'll likely get that tomorrow. 

There are lots of extra modes you can play on the various maps. One is called Super Grinder that had 100 waves (the longest story mission was 35 waves). You would think this 100 waves would take a long time, but with the 3X speed button, you can make it go pretty quickly, if you can keep up. 

I also managed to finish up with Disruptor for PS1 during the week. This, one of Insomniac's first games, is a nice FPS with FMV cutscenes. It got super hard on the Mars level and the controls didn't help. You move with the d-pad and strafe with the L2, R2 buttons, shooting with the X and using psionics with square. It works, but takes some getting used to. Boy, gaming before analog sticks was a little uncomfortable. 

Then I started Fear Effect. This has really beautiful anime style cutscenes of air cars over a dystopian city ala Ghost in the Shell or Blade Runner. It controls much like Disruptor but you can use analog sticks if you want. I was now used to the d-pad controls so I stuck with it. The game has you in third person and you can use items to do things in the world. I had some trouble understanding the controls for items at first, but I figured it out - square to scroll, triangle to select. Anyway, it seems really good, but I've only played about a half hour so far. 

And that's a week. Disrupting times ahead. I'll keep you posted.